A Young Man with His Life Ahead of Him
by Loveedith
Summary: What happened to Anthony after he left Edith at the altar? Will he ever meet Edith again? Canon, I think.
1. Tuscany

When the news of Lady Edith's marriage to Herbert Pelham reached Sir Anthony it was already spring in Tuscany.

...

Anthony lived in a small village just outside Florence. He lived a good life and had settled well in Italy. Of course, his Italian had always been quite good, and after five years in Italy it was now almost perfect.

A varm climate, Italian food from the many small resturants in the village and in Florence. An opera almost every week, played by the best mucisians and singers in the world. Sometimes a trip to some other part of Italy, there was so much to see in this remarkable country.

Sir Anthony had settled amazingly well in Italy, especially considering how unhappy he had been when he first arrived.

He had changed his life completely, and it had given him a feeling of freedom to leave it all behind. Perhaps he should have done it long ago.

...

A month after Sir Anthony Strallan had left Lady Edith at the altar he had it all settled.

He had left for London in the afternoon, with the fixed resolution never to return to Yorkshire again.

They had planned to spend their wedding night and their first day as a married couple at Strallan house in London, so he just followed the plan.

The difference was of course that Edith wasn't with him. So instead of the usual sightseeing he went to see his lawyer and told him to sell Locksley and Strallan house. He was fully determined that he should never bother Edith with his presence again.

Then he went to Italy. After three weeks he had a letter telling him that his estate and his London house were sold. He now had enough money to buy a small house - well, perhaps not small, but much smaller than Locksley - and live there for the rest of his life.

The only things in Locksley that he had kept was the books from the library. He had had them packed away before the house was sold and later he had them sent to Italy. The biggest room in his house was now a library.

He had thought of keeping the library sofa - where Edith had so often sat - but decided against it. He couldn't be sentimental about things like that. He had given her up, and now he had to live with that.

Because he was certain that he had made the right decision. He didn't want to stand in her way. What she needed was a young chap with his life ahead of him.

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AN: Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment!


	2. A Young Marquess

It was a spur of the moment that made Sir Anthony Strallan leave the church during his wedding to Lady Edith Crawley.

But after he had done it it just took him an hour or two in his library at Locksley to realise what he had done. He couldn't live on in England. He had to do his utmost to get out of Edith's life for good.

He wouldn't be a burden to her in the new, happy life he was sure she would get.

...

He had left her in the most humiliating way, so he owed it to her to make himself at least tolerably happy. Or if not happy - that seemed impossible without her - at least content. Peaceful and content.

You are only happy about things when you think about them. You are only unhappy about things when you think about them. So Anthony decided never to think about Lady Edith Crawley again.

It was an impossible undertaking, of course. In the beginning it was thoroughly impossible to get Edith out off his mind.

But as times went by and he settled into his new life in Italy he found himself thinking less and less about Edith. After some months he could enjoy a chapter in a book, half a meal, a brisk walk in the surroundings of his villa, without a single thought about her. Half a year later it was getting even better, now he could see a whole opera or a concert, or read most of an interesting book, without being disturbed by any thoughts of Edith.

As the years went by without any news whatsoever about Edith, things got increasingly easy. As long as he kept himself occupied with doing things he enjoyed he could avoid thinking about her unhappy face behind that veil for days or weeks, and later even months.

He was sure Edith had got over him by now.

...

In april of 1926 Anthony's sister Emilia came for a short visit. She and his English lawyer were almost the only people in his old country who knew Anthony's address in Italy. Her children and grandchildren knew also, he sometimes sent them presents and cards, but his sister was the only one who had ever visited him in Italy.

Emilia stayed for two weeks and during the first week Anthony had a feeling that there was something she wanted to tell him.

"I'm sure you have heard that Lady Edith is married", she suddenly blurted out one morning at the breakfast table. "It was in all the big newspapers. The wedding of the year, they called it."

But Anthony didn't know. He had missed it. He only read Italian newspapers.

Emilia looked at him. It was obvious from his expression that he hadn't heard about it. She had been afraid of telling him, fearing that she would open old wounds, but he was obviously more relieved than anything else.

"I brought some cuttings from the papers. We can have a look at them later if you wish. Or I could just throw them away."

...

An hour later Anthony and Emilia were sitting in Anthony's library. Articles about the marriage between Herbert Pelham, the Marquess of Hexham and Edith Crawley, the daughter of the Earl of Grantham, were spread out on the table in front of them.

The Marquess of Hexham - the chap looked nice enough in the pictures and Edith was absolutely glowing.

Perhaps the young man looked a bit sheepish. But he was sheepish for a good reason. He looked at his beautiful young bride with an expression of love and adoration, like if he had difficulties believing in his own luck.

A young Marquess who was deeply in love with her? That was all Anthony could ever have wished for Edith.

Edith was happy now - Anthony had no reason to feel guilty about it all any longer. A stone had fallen from his chest. He had always thought he had done the right thing, but he also knew how humiliating it must have been for her to be left like that in the church in front of all her friends and family.

...

That was the first thing Sir Anthony heard about Lady Edith after their failed wedding. It could very well have been the very last thing that he heard about her also.

If it hadn't been for Mussolini.

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An: Thank you for reading! Thank you for all the lovely reviews to my first chapter! Please leave a comment!

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I don't know how many stories I have written about Anthony sitting unhappily in his library at Locksley. I wanted this one to be different.

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The first chapter of this story was supposed to be a one-shot, but I forgot to mark it as complete. But then I noticed I've got more to say, so I kept going. There will be at least one more chapter.

...

Right now I have 5 unfinished stories here. It seems I can't stop myself from starting new ones.


	3. Back Home

Sir Anthony Strallan moved to Tuscany in Italy in 1920. Benito Mussolini became the Prime Minister of Italy in 1922.

There was so much Anthony liked in Italy. The climate, the food, the operas. The almost negligible risk of bumping into Lady Edith there. So he stayed on over the years, hoping for the best and trying to forget the undemocratic way the country was governed.

At first Mussolini didn't seem all that bad to Sir Anthony. Mussolini's government started a lot of new projects, new roads were built, new buildings were erected, new fields were cultivated. Unemployment went down. The fascists also successfully combatted the Sicilian mafia.

Italy prospered - for some time...

...

It was not until the year of 1936 that Anthony decided to return to England. In 1935 Mussolini's Italy attacked Ethiopia. Emperor Haile Selassie was forced to flee the country in 1936. The League of Nations' imposed economic sanctions on Italy. England and France were the countries to demand that.

Anthony decided that he couldn't stay in Italy any longer. He was sure a new great war was coming, and he didn't want to be caught in an enemy country, if Italy decided to side with the German Nazis, which seemed very likely.

So Anthony had his books packed down and sent to storage in London. They were even more numerous than they had been when he brought them to Italy. He then had his Italian villa sold and returned to England.

Anthony's sister had, as I've already told you, visited him earlier and told him about the wedding between Edith and Herbert Pelham, the Marquess of Hexham. Emilia left Anthony some newspaper cuttings from the wedding, which he still kept, although they were getting increasingly yellow and bristle. He couldn't get himself to throw away pictures of Edith, so he packed them with the books.

Lady Edith had been the Marchioness of Hexham for more than ten years by then. It was sixteen years since Anthony last saw her, so he thought it was safe for him to return to his native country. Sixteen years does a lot to change a person's looks. Even if they happened to bump into each other, he was fairly sure that they wouldn't recognise each other.

The first months after he returned to England Anthony lived with his sister Emilia in London, while looking for something more permanent.

Anthony didn't intend to live in London, only visit it occasionally. He had always preferred to live in the countryside. He wasn't going to get back to Yorkshire either, that would be too close to his own as well as Lady Edith's childhood home. Yorkshire and Locksley were finished chapters in his life, just as Lady Edith was. Tuscany was about to become the same.

There was no way he could find a place in England or anywhere else on the British Islands with the same clement climate as Tuscany. But he wanted to live somewhere in the south, so he could go up to London occasionally and see his sister and her children and grandchildren, and also go to the theatres there or to concerts.

He looked at some houses for sale - even smaller houses than his Italian villa - and finally decided to settle in a house in small village close to the coast of Kent, the garden of England. It seemed to be the closest to Italy he could get.

...

Five years later Sir Anthony met Lady Edith again.

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AN:Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think! Thank you for the kind reviews to last chapter!

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When I placed Anthony in Italy I wasn't thinking of what happened there during those years. I intended to leave him there in Italy with the warm climate, the nice food and all the operas for the rest of his life.

For me Anthony is around 40-45 in 1914 - which makes him around 65-70 in 1939. So I had to get him home from Italy before the war started if I didn't want to kill him off early, which I am very reluctant to do. As far as I can remember I have never written a whole story where Anthony dies.


	4. Anderson Shelters

"So those are the things that are supposed to protect us from the German bombs?" Sir Anthony said with incredulity, shaking his head.

Anthony was standing in the front garden of his sister Emilia's house in London, looking at six sheets of corrugated steel.

"Don't be unpatriotic, Anthony", Emilia warned. "This is part of the war effort. Besides, it is not only the sheets as I'm sure you know. We are supposed to dig a cavity, and then use the sheets as walls and roof. And then put the earth from the cavity and sandbags on top of it all. There is a description here. I just want you to help me out a little."

"I'm no good at digging, I'm afraid", Anthony said with a sigh, pointing at his disfunctional arm. "You need two hands for that."

"Don't worry", Emilia said. "I have my son-in-law and grand-sons to help me with that. I only wanted to show this to you to see if you have any ideas about how to make it as comfortable and safe as possible. I know you are good at things like that."

Anthony looked from his sister to the corrugated steel, wondering what to say about it all. Emilia could see his reluctance.

"I know there is no way to make it withstand a direct hit", she added. "But at least I want it to be able to withstand the debris that might be thrown around."

"I think you should move out into the country and live with me", Anthony grumbled. "Instead of wasting time on this. There is no reason for you to stay in London."

"I know, but even if I do that, I will still want to build a shelter. I want anyone passing by during a raid to be able to use it. I'm not building this for myself, I know I don't have all that many years left anyhow. And you know that since my son was killed in the last war I'm not afraid of death. Nothing can be worse than that... So please get serious! Try to be a little helpful!"

Emilia was 76 years old by now, Anthony 66, but to Emilia Anthony was still a little boy.

Anthony wondered briefly if he would have been such a meek and submissive man if he didn't have a sister who was so much older than him and constantly ordered him around.

Then he started studying the drawing Emilia handed to him.

...

Lady Edith Pelham, the Marchioness of Hexham, looked up from her newspaper at the breakfast table at Brancaster. Edith had never adopted her mother's old-fashioned ideas of having breakfast in bed. She preferred to eat with her husband and discuss the things in the newspapers with him.

They were both trying to keep the staff at Brancaster to a minimum. Both of them dressed themselves, there was no lady's maid and no valet. If Edith needed some help with a zipper on the back of her dress, she asked her husband. Women's clothes were so much simpler now than before the war, anyhow.

And now there was going to be a new war. A new war against Germany.

Edith looked at her husband across the table, feeling her heart skip a beat when she saw him. Her mother had told her on her wedding day that she would be happy for a long time now, and she had been right. Everything in Edith's life had turned out so much better than she had thought possible that dreadful day when she first realised she was pregnant with Marigold.

And Bertie - there was no one like him really.

She had resolved to remain a spinster when she decided to bring Marigold back from Switzerland. Then she had met Bertie, and that decision had suddenly been so much harder.

...

"Are you going up to London to fix that Anderson shelter?" she asked him now.

He looked up at her with his usual friendly smile.

"Yes, it's upon time to have it done. The war seems more and more inevitable."

"Just imagine I once contemplated marrying a German citizen!" Edith said. "I'm sorry for Michael, but I'm glad that never happened! It would have been very awkward now."

Her husband looked at her. He really didn't need to say anything about this, he knew the whole story already. Gregson's loss had been Bertie's gain, and he refused to be sorry about that.

"Are you coming with me to London?" he asked instead. "I would love to have your company and you haven't been to the magazine for a long time."

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AN: Thank you for reading! And thank you for the nice comments to last chapter! Please leave a comment!

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The inspiration for this chapter comes mainly from the book _The Blitz - an Illustrated History_ by _Gavin Mortimer_ that I am currently reading.

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There were around 3,5 million Anderson shelters built in England before and during the war. People with low incomes got them for free, people like Emilia or the Hexhams had to pay 7 pounds for them.

They really did save lives, in spite of their simple construction. There are many interesting pictures of them on the internet. More facts about them can be found there as well.


End file.
